Busy, Not Busy; Not Alone, Alone

As my vegetarian, 14-year-old artist finalizes her portfolio in preparation for applying to the School of the Arts, up on Twin Peaks, all I can say is thank god for hummus and edemame.

These are among the constants in my refrigerator, especially at a time she is growing so fast that everyone who sees her after a week or two gap, repeats the same mantra: "Julia, have you grown taller again?"

Today, in the driving rain, I started off driving her 16-year-old brother's carpool to Lowell HS out near the Ocean. He loves the rain and the fog, so he is always happy when we have this type of weather.

Soon after, it was back out into the rain to pick Julia up from shadowing at Mission HS across the street from Dolores Park. The day is close when she has to choose among the six schools on her list and to rank them.

The city's lottery demands that approach.

As I settled in to try and work, a new call came -- my 18-year-old had a dental emergency, so soon it was out in the (now) mist once again, to rush him to the dentist, all the way over near North Beach in the far end of Polk Gulch, at the western edge of Russian Hill.

After that it was back and forth from here to the gym and to Bernal as night time settled over the City by the Bay. All told, I'd driven nearly 49 miles, an appropriate number for this City that measures 7 miles by 7.

***

I have not been blogging here much lately, and for that I apologize to the handful of loyal readers who keep an eye on this space. I'm going to try and amend for that. Plus, there are reasons good and bad for my silence.

The good is that I have been busy with work projects that are helping me limp to the finish line of the worst financial year, for me, of the past quarter century. I may be limping but at least I am still standing.

The bad is I have felt ill from some time now, both physically and mentally. I don't usually write about depression, but it is no secret that among writers this is a common problem.

I'm fine with it, normally. Like other emotional states it can be episodic. It's only when it settles in like an unwanted house guest that I become concerned.

I have worked hard enough on depression to know the proper therapy, which is to connect with others. Luckily, it is not a challenge to find people I know and also to meet new people.

I meet new people every week, literally. Most of them are young, smart, pleasant, interesting. We have wonderful conversations. A substantial number of them are also lovely young women -- an added bonus for a man who has always loved women.

But these relationships, for the most part, are fleeting -- bits of conversations traded as if on the wind, a fragment may blow first this way and then that. I am reminded at those times of cherry blossom leaves in Japan as the trees disengage themselves from their fragments of beauty, exchanging them for greenery and the richness of fruit, only later still to soon stand empty and bare as the winter arrives.

It is winter, in the city and in my life.

As a Michigan boy, I wish it would start snowing outside, sort of. But if it did, and I had no one to share it with, I probably would be more drawn to Robert Frost's "Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening."

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Happy Endings

Driving up to Sacramento on Thanksgiving, we could see the snow-capped Sierra far to the east. The air was that clear and crisp our whole visit.

I've grown to love the neighborhood where my daughter and her family live. There are so many trees that remind me of my youth in Michigan.

A place with actual seasons.

The trees in the park near her house are gorgeous this time of year -- leaves red, yellow, orange and green.

My youngest and I made five pies -- two pecan, two pumpkin and one apple. Others in the family made the turkey, dressing, gravy, three green salads, sauteed brussel sprouts, Waldorf Salad, broccoli, other veggies, other side dishes and other desserts.

It was a magnificent feast -- as it is for many people, Thanksgiving is my favorite meal of the year. As a boy, I loved dark meat; later on I grew to like white meat; as I've grown older, I now once again strongly prefer dark meat.

The kids baked this turkey to perfection, as far as the dark meat was concerned. So juicy, perfect.

The rest of the five day weekend involved a lot of driving, homework, more college application stuff, football games on TV, and writing.

It's impossible at my age to not turn to memories during the holiday periods. I can easily summon the moment as a young child, with my nose pressed to the window of our house in Royal Oak, that I first grasped the enormity of the fact that every snowflake hitting the outside of that same window had a unique shape.

This was math at its best -- capturing the concept of infinity.

An infinite number of anything implies unrestrained uniqueness. The concept of unique appeals to the inner mathematical core of a writer.

Writers fancy ourselves as unique voices. We are arrogant in this way -- that we believe our ability to string together words in a visual narrative is as distinct as our fingerprint.

It's our verbal fingerprint.

Storytellers need to believe that stories matter and that the way we choose to tell ours matters as a result.

We may not ever discover why we write; or whether it is a gift, a psychological disorder, an urge to connect, a desire to be heard, or a malady not yet diagnosed by medicine.

But we write. We write and write. I've written millions of words. They've been read by hundreds of thousands of people.

The other day, in the park, shooting the photo at the top of this post, I felt I could look through those beautiful orange leaves to heaven.

I don't know what I mean by heaven.

My 18-year-old son was here the other day when some Christians showed up at the front door wanting to talk to us about Christ. He politely explained to them that he is an atheist and they politely moved on to ring the next doorbell in their missionary outreach.

Maybe by heaven I mean what I felt I was glimpsing was the end of my own particular story. If so, it was a lovely shade of orange, like sundown in the tropics.

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